It is Saturday morning and I am working at the Filson in the library. There is this directory sitting on the desk where I am working so I thought I would list the whiskey firms listed in the directory as a way to pass the morning.

Edward's Annual Directory for the City of Louisville, 1864-65. pp.551-552.

In Louisville the street that run east-west from the river are Water, Main, Market, and Jefferson. The north-south streets are numbered with 1st Street in the east and the larger numbers to the west. East of 1st Street are Named stretts such as Brook, Jackson, Hancock, etc...

This will give you a good idea as where "Whiskey Row" was located in Louisville in 1864-65. There are even more companies in this same area after the Civil War, but the area is still about the same.

What would be the reason(s) for all of those companies grouping together in that one area? Of course one reason would be that it was the heart of the shipping district, but were there also "tobacco row" and "leather row" and other "rows" in the same vicinity? Another reason might be that the warehouses were there. Didn't many (or all) of these companies deal, not in bourbon-making, but in trading the ownership of barrels of bourbon as a commodity, same as some of us might be doing today with crude oil?

Linn,
Most are rectifiers, but a few are distillers with offices. Take E H Taylor, he was working for Gaines, who controlled the Old Crow brand in the early 1860's and probably branching out with product from Oscar Pepper's distillery, or may have simply been Gaines' representative in Louisville. He actually lived in Frankfort and this is probably just his representative.

John,
That is the area nearest the wharf. The steamboats would line up along the river and the goods could be loaded for shipping. There are also a lot of tobacco warehouses just west of whiskey row.